


00m06s

by Bitenomnom



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Future, Alternate Universe - Science Fiction, Crack, F/F, Gen, London is a planet now, M/M, Post-Reichenbach, and I take it back it is at least slightly less cracky than it sounds, borne of a Mad Lib, no but seriously absolute crack, possibly slightly sketchy BDSM practices?, slight BDSM, sort of technically but not really dubious consent??
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-16
Updated: 2013-01-16
Packaged: 2017-11-25 17:02:29
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,688
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/641145
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bitenomnom/pseuds/Bitenomnom
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>(Based on a Mad Lib summary filled in by some of my Tumblr followers.)</p><p>There are six things about Irene Adler that Molly Hooper doesn’t know.</p><p>The first is that Irene, without fail and every seventeen days, will julienne Molly Hooper’s bunny with velvet sheep.</p><p>The second is that Irene possesses an entire yard of hugs, which she keeps in her paracetamol.</p><p>The third is that John knows about Irene’s paracetamol.</p><p>The fourth is that seven milliseconds ago, Irene admonished a cucumber on the library.</p><p>The fifth is that the library now houses a nudity arrangement made in Irene’s honor, or at least it did, up until Donovan found out about it and spit as a result.</p><p>The sixth is that Irene tangibly embalmed Molly Hooper.</p><p>The other thing Molly Hooper doesn’t know is that fortunately (or unfortunately), over the course of the next millennium, she is going to find out all six of these things. Savagely. Soggily.</p>
            </blockquote>





	00m06s

**Author's Note:**

> PLEASE NOTE that this was written to match [the summary](http://toasterfish.tumblr.com/post/37019854939/the-mad-lib-results) formed by some of my Tumblr followers filling in a Mad Lib I made (so blame them! ...er, uh, I mean...). Uhmm...I...tried to make it make as much sense as it possibly could, but hopefully you can see how difficult such a task was. XD Be gentle, haha. This isn't meant to be more than crack, although it turned out much bigger than I thought it would. (And thank you to [Morwen_Eledhwen](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Morwen_Eledhwen/pseuds/Morwen_Eledhwen) for beta-ing!!)
> 
> Also note that I used some kind of obscure definitions for some of the words. (And of course made one up completely for another...) So, er, yeah. I know it's a bit of a stretch. @_@ I dare you to do better, haha. 
> 
> Also also note that sci-fi is not a thing that I usually write. Er. Don't think too hard about anything in here because it's probably just BS I came up with and ran with... (Except the German chemist, I thought about that one, you can Google him.)
> 
> Also also also, for fun, [I made a cover for it](http://toasterfish.tumblr.com/post/40663778711/title-00m06s-summary-there-are-six-things).

              There was a rap at the door, followed by a few faint clicking sounds, followed by the door bursting open, the hiss of its airtight seal startling Molly from her reading. “I need your help.”  
           This is exactly what Molly Hooper would have been expecting of Sherlock, the breaking in and the sudden and adamant request for assistance, except that Sherlock would say it something like, “Where are the six mobiles I left here? I need them! Quickly!” or “Fetch that bin of worn shoes for me at once; it’s urgent.” She would _not_ expect Sherlock to particularly request _help_ , not after he had lowered himself to do so the one time.  
           She also would not have expected Sherlock to request it of her in the higher pitch of a woman’s voice.  
           Of course, it wasn’t Sherlock.  
           Someone else had hacked her way into Molly’s house, only to ask her for assistance. She was almost too confused to be worried. Someone had guessed her door password, which was…well. That was bad.  
           Molly bustled toward the door as the woman who’d entered it sealed it behind her.  
           Oh.  
           Molly had seen this woman before.  
           Except, last Molly knew, she was dead.  
           “With what?” was all she could think to ask, because helping was, apparently, what Molly was best at. She’d helped Sherlock fake his death and now here was this woman, who she herself had thought dead, back at her door.  
           The woman shrugged off her long coat and draped it over the chair in Molly’s sitting room.  
           “That’s Sherlock’s,” Molly noted.  
           “Yes,” said the woman—Irene—The Woman; that was how Sherlock had referred to her, that was what was on her site—Molly had looked it up. For…well. She’d been curious. What got Sherlock so…acting funny. Molly maybe couldn’t blame him. “He left it for me.”  
           “Oh,” said Molly. That wasn’t true, though. She’d removed it from him herself.  
           “Well, he sent it to me after he died.”  
           Molly blinked. “After he…”  
           “You needn’t play dumb; we both know what Sherlock Holmes did.”  
           That much, it appeared, was true.  
           “Right. Um. I don’t know what you’re talking about. I saw him. Er. I signed the…he was…dead.”  
           “So was I. You signed that one, too, didn’t you?” Irene came closer, drifted closer, sashayed closer. She smiled.  
           “I’m not supposed to…” Her pocket buzzed. “Oh. Um. Message,” Molly explained, retrieving a miniscule console from her pocket and sending Irene furtive glances as she thumbed in her password. She had to be more careful now. Her password wasn’t TOBY anymore. Sherlock’s secrets were on this device. Her password was icannottellyouthatpleasestoptorturingme, because Sherlock had a sick sense of humor when he had one. It was different from her door password, which was ikeepitsafelylocked, also in case of torture scenarios, maybe. And it was true enough, of course. Molly squinted at the message that her mobile device projected into her eye, not that squinting really did much of anything. The message read, “It’s fine,” and, “I’m almost done,” and, “You can burn all the evidence and leave if you wish,” followed by, “Black, two sugars,” which was a code that meant it was definitely sent by Sherlock.  
           Molly glanced up to Irene, who was smirking. Or smiling. Or. Well. It reminded Molly a little bit of the storybooks her grandparents always went on about, about the devil, or something. But Sherlock said it was okay, and Sherlock wasn’t always right about everything, but he was usually righter than most people about most things.  
           “What do you need?” Molly asked.  
           “I can’t explain it all now,” Irene grabbed Molly’s shoulders in either hand. From the corner of her eye, Molly could see the deep red gleam of her fingernails. They were beautiful. It was a little bit like thickened and drying blood had been painted onto them, layer over layer, and then lacquered over just as it had almost dried, a rich and beautiful rust-red-brown. Except, she wouldn’t say that, because that was probably one of those really weird morgue things that Sherlock would just sneer at, his brows all furrowed as he told her not to try to be a poet or a comedian or whatever else. From right across from Molly, right near her, just a foot or so away, Irene raised an eyebrow at her, as if she could read Molly’s mind. Molly blurted, “Your fingernails are like shiny dried blood.”  
           “Thank you,” said Irene, with an exact butter-smoothness that for some reason made Molly flush. “I thought so too.”  
           “Y-you…did?”  
           “Mm,” said Irene. She glanced back at the door, and gripped Molly’s shoulders with renewed urgency. “I’m being chased.”  
           “By who?”  
           “Let’s just say it’s not in my favor the New Scotland Yard is docked here right now.”  
           Of course they were docked here right now. Even if Saint Bartholomew weren’t the biggest city on all of London, it was practically _made_ to house the SS Yard. The SS Yard was built here. What’s more, well, there had been…the things that had happened several years ago. Or—or several seconds ago, depending on where you were. Molly heard milliseconds passed like weeks at the scene of—from where—well. The detectives from the Yard were still looking into it, so they still had that fancy device there, for slowing down time at crime scenes. Molly was almost tired of seeing their garish green uniforms (great for extreme temperatures and radiation and being identifiable from the greatest distance by the human eye, but terrible for fashion), after seeing them about day and night for months or whatever it had been by now. Sherlock had a fair few cracks about the Yard; John had relayed a selection of them in his blog, which of course had taken off (if not for that reason), and which of course John immediately regretted, but there was really no going back. “He said, and I quote,” John had written, “‘They’re like cucumbers,’” (which, Sherlock said later, had definitely at one point been a thing that existed, no matter how ridiculous the name was, citing numerous old texts with recipes for ‘dill pickles,’ which sounded interesting, but had probably never actually been used in any murders no matter what Sherlock said), “‘A green, caloric deficit with no real purpose except temporary, masturbatory relief for people who haven’t the intelligence or common sense to find a more effective implement.’” Sherlock said cucumbers used to be extremely expensive, at least right before they stopped existing. Other, uh, things, were cheaper, for those…purposes. Molly had tried very, very hard not to blush at the implications of what that made Sherlock, if the detectives of the SS Yard were cucumbers and Sherlock was the less expensive, more effective alternative.  
           “What did you do?”  
           “May’ve pissed off a cucumber.”  
           Molly blushed and tried not to think of Sherlock, or maybe, not that, because she wasn’t thinking of Sherlock right now, but the red, the blood, the, the, the Woman, who of course also read John’s blog and knew all about London’s favorite nickname for detectives of the Yard. Even if she was dead five minutes ago. Of course she still knew that. And of course she, well, she, being who she was, she, probably, she probably knew about things that were more effective than cucumbers at, at, at that. Which was, which was… This wasn’t about that. This was about a cucumber—a—a—a detective.  
           “So they’re a-after you for that? Just for that?” Molly finally stuttered out.  
           “Not exactly,” said Irene. She held up her mobile device after punching in her password, and pulled up a hologram of a…well. A very interesting…art…thingy. Molly tried to look and not look at the same time, which proved difficult, and looking won. “Did you ever see this at the library?”  
           “N-no,” Molly said, going a deeper red. She would definitely remember if she had gone to the library and seen about seven naked people all arranged, er, very, er, creatively. With lots of…pretty…paint…covering their…everything. There were also…er…there were…whips and…handcuffs and…things.  
           “They dedicated it to me,” said Irene. “I showed those cucumbers exactly how Jim Moriarty’s death was a suicide, not a murder.”  
           “Oh,” Molly said, “Good. Er, that’ll help that area of Bart’s, won’t it?” Because it had more or less cleared out, it had, when word got out that people could get up through the top floor of the library all the way to the roof carrying a _gun_ , and could shoot people, and, and, it was scary. Nobody liked that idea. Nobody liked the idea of being the next person dragged to the top of the roof and executed. But Moriarty hadn’t been dragged to the roof, and Sherlock was dead anyway, as far as they knew, so there really wasn’t any cause for concern at all.  
           “Yes,” said Irene, “it has. That’s why the library dedicated this to me.” She smiled. “Very pretty, don’t you think?”  
           “Y-yes. The, er, colors…”  
           “And good advertising, too.” She put the picture away, which really made Molly feel a lot better.  
           “How long has it been there?” Molly usually passed the library about every other day.  
           “From outside the dome? A month or so. From inside? About three milliseconds.”  
           “So they really still have the dome up?” The slowed time would’ve made the library rather popular, too, except that everyone was afraid of being shot. Which was a silly fear, really, even farther beyond Sherlock being dead and also not a murderer. They could venture about six streets away and die by an equally effective strangling or stabbing or whatever else people did to kill people. Molly wasn’t a part of that. Even if she…  
           Irene coughed, still smiling a buttery smile, and pulled something out of her pocket.  
           “Is that…the switch?”  
           Which Irene seemed to find extra funny, and which really confused Molly, until she remembered some alternate definitions of that word. “To the dome?”  
Irene’s smirk grew.  
           “Wow,” Molly mouthed. “That’s…really illegal.” She suddenly felt light-headed.  
           “It’s not the first illegal thing I’ve done,” Irene said. Molly felt like there were a lot of stories behind that, and they probably weren’t about faking her death or even very explicit holograms or dangerous government secrets. Irene’s stare, when she stared at Molly after she spoke, was knowing. Molly shuddered. Irene definitely didn’t know about her…er. Just because she had nice doors and a nice mobile—Sherlock could have given her those. Irene hadn’t even seen her…any of the rest of her house. Or that it was a house. It still looked like a teeny little flat. Molly didn’t start it. It was Sherlock. For showing her at his and John’s Christmas party exactly how he stole Detective (cucumber, but he wasn’t a cucumber, because he really couldn’t be, he was smart and nice and Sherlock got along with him) Inspector Lestrade’s badges. And for making it look so…neat. Fun. And for…well. This wasn’t the nicest place. People stabbed each other. And Molly had learned a lot from Sherlock. She didn’t have to stab people. This was better, wasn’t it? Better than killing even one person. You couldn’t put a value on a life. A life was worth more than anything, and therefore, it followed naturally, worth more than a lot of things.  
           “Why would you come here?” Molly asked. There were definitely people Irene knew better. Trusted more. Surely.  
           “For one,” Irene said, “if we don’t leave before the coppers and the cukes break your door down, you’re going to be hauled off too, when they realize what you’ve been up to.”  
           Which was true. Probably. Eventually. “How do you…?” But of course she knew. She knew Sherlock. Sherlock, apparently, told her everything, down to the code to break into Molly’s house. “Never mind. Okay.”  
           “Smart girl,” Irene said.  
           “So you just…just because I can’t call for help? That’s all? There are about twenty people in the next mile who’ve done…things…also. Worse things.”  
           “That’s not all,” Irene said, gathering up some of Molly’s belongings for her, “But that’s not important. We need to leave now.”  
           Whatever it was, it was definitely important, but Molly couldn’t really say anything, not right now. She hurried off to her bag of emergency supplies she’d kept handy, in case she and Sherlock had had to flee. “All right,” she said. Because she was mad. Because she was absolutely loony. Because Molly Hooper did ridiculous things like sign papers saying that Sherlock Holmes was dead, and Molly Hooper did bad things like steal peoples’ money, for things she _needed_ , she thought, which was much better than killing people, and much better than being killed, or raped, or both, which was the sort of thing that happened to people like her living in a neighborhood like this. Lots of work in a morgue here…which was not really that much of a perk, as it turned out. Molly Hooper lied and cheated and stole, and so maybe running off hand in hand, cold-stubby-fingers-hand in beautiful-dried-blood-nails hand, wasn’t so bad, maybe, because, well, because, that was how it was done, wasn’t it, because Irene needed her help with something, and Molly needed to not say no or else she’d be in someplace even worse than this. Whatever crazy adventure was coming, it couldn’t be any crazier than anything Molly had already done. She could stick with Irene, for now. “I’m ready.”  
           “A ready woman is my kind of woman,” said Irene, which made Molly blush really quite a lot. “Now, I trust you have your own ship.”  
           Molly did. Not that many people did, not here anyway, but Molly did. Sherlock said it wouldn’t be necessary (but Sherlock didn’t get much of a say in it anyway, because she already had the ship, before that, didn’t she?). He said that he wouldn’t need any further help from Molly, but he was galaxies away (not really, but he definitely wasn’t in this solar system anymore), but she would be able to be there if he needed something, because, well…well. Of course she would help him. Anytime. With anything. And this was, sort of, him wanting her to help Irene, wasn’t it? Because he’d told her Molly’s door combination, and he’d sent Molly that message, black, two sugars.  
           And Irene was really quite a lot like Sherlock. She was brilliant, and, and, when she came into the room it was like she was a miniature cyclone, because she sucked everything up around her, and Molly had to look at her, and maybe she was just like Sherlock in that nobody knew if she was going to pass through mercifully because she had her eyes on a farther target, or if she was going to lay waste to everyone in the room before she left. Molly didn’t know everything about what Irene had done, before she and John had discussed in quiet tones that Irene was dead, that John had told Sherlock she’d moved on to a different system under a witness protection program but John was sure that Sherlock knew the truth anyway, because that was what Sherlock did. She didn’t know what had happened, why Irene had to die again, but Sherlock was quiet for a while, and John was quiet for a while, and so it had to have been something destructive. Like a cyclone. Like Sherlock, sometimes. Not that Irene was exactly like Sherlock, no. Because Sherlock didn’t care one way or the other about ready women, and Sherlock didn’t have dried-blood nails, and Sherlock wasn’t hovering just behind her, silent and waiting and buttery warm.  
           Molly shuffled over to a keypad by the door to her room and thumbed in another password, and the door unlatched to reveal an ordinary bedroom, Molly’s things scattered all over. She tried to stand so that Irene couldn’t see that her great-grandmother’s cat plush toy was tucked beside her pillow, but Irene probably did see it, because she smiled a little as she followed Molly. Or maybe she wasn’t smiling at that. Maybe she saw the fact that Sherlock had used this room, while he was here, when Molly offered to sleep out on the sofa instead. She maybe saw little rings of coffee stains on the set of drawers yet knew that Molly mostly only drank tea. Maybe she knew what side of the bed Sherlock got out on and saw worn carpet there from weeks and weeks up until several months ago, even though Molly’s blankets from when she’d gotten up today opened to the other side. Probably she saw the atrocious stain that Sherlock had left on the wall when he’d been trying to mix something up in Molly’s room, before she set aside a little workshop area for him downstairs.  
           Molly opened one of the drawers and reached to the back of it, keying something else in. She moved one of the ten-odd rugs she’d scattered on the carpet to cover various stains that had accumulated over time, when she tripped with her tea and spilled it everywhere, or brought fingers down to Sherlock and splattered a little blood on the floor, and pulled on a handle. With the hissing sound of decompressing air, the door popped open, and Molly motioned for Irene to follow her down the stairs. “Um, it’s down here,” she said. “Mind the glass…” Sherlock had been bad at cleaning up. Molly didn’t go down to her basement often enough to bother, either. When she turned to look at Irene, she paused.  
           “You’re good,” said Irene. Molly shivered. “I wondered what you were doing with all that money.”  
           Molly flushed. Sherlock must’ve told her a great deal about Molly’s…habits. “Er. Well…you know. We needed a way to get away. Sherlock and I. In case…you know.”  
           “How good of you to be prepared,” Irene said, buttery smooth and all, and Molly knew that Irene knew that Molly had maybe definitely possibly had the ship before Sherlock had even thought to fake his death. But it wasn’t as if anyone had come to ill because she’d got it, or not anyone who wasn’t…well. She could do a lot more with this than they could with anything, and that was sort of the way the world turned these days, wasn’t it? Or maybe Jim had been right, back before Jim had been James Moriarty. Maybe Molly liked it a little too much. Of course Jim didn’t know, of course James didn’t know, of course Moriarty didn’t know about the basement or the ship, the latter of which she hadn’t had then anyway. He knew about the secure locking doors and the fact that Molly had a nice big refrigerator where she kept all the tongues and toes and livers that she meant to give to Sherlock, that she wasn’t strictly supposed to have in the first place. Jim said that Sherlock made a criminal out of Molly, encouraging her to steal all those organs. Maybe he was right about that, too. But Molly was her own person. She could’ve stopped; Sherlock hadn’t brainwashed her. She just…didn’t.  
           Molly opened the hatch to the ship. It was a little thing, of course. Bit of a pain to get a hold of, actually, because most of the time everybody wanted to know when somebody had a ship, and there were papers and registration to fill out. “Pointless,” Sherlock had said, and mumbled something about Mycroft being so meticulous about keeping track of who had a means of leaving the system, and found somebody who knew somebody who wouldn’t notice if a ship disappeared from his fleet and a hundred thou appeared in his pocket. Molly was pretty sure that Mycroft knew anyway, because she’d bumped into him once at the café down the street, and the café definitely wasn’t good enough to explain what someone like him was doing someplace like this. It was probably a warning. But that didn’t matter now.  
           The ladder slid down to the ground and Molly clambered up with her things over her shoulder. She looked down to Irene, who was climbing up the ladder in shoes that were not very practical ladder-climbing shoes, and knelt down, and held her hand out. Irene took it. Molly felt a buzz run over her arm and around the back of her ribcage and into her belly before tremoring up her chest. She held tighter and helped hoist Irene—Irene, who didn’t push away, who just let her help—up onto the deck.  
           “It’s a bit small,” said Molly, “but really pretty quick.”  
           “She’s lovely,” said Irene, who had definitely seen much fancier ships in her life, Molly was sure. Irene had traveled all over. Molly saw about it on her site. Well, not her site, there was that too, but the traveling was on her other blog, her other blog where she had something like an army of followers (but not really an army, of course). Irene had been to New Paris. Irene said that from the outside the Milky Way really does look milky. Molly accidentally tripped over her bag while she thought about milky skin whilst simultaneously trying to reach for the console to shut the hatch.  
           “I’ve, er,” said Molly. “I’ve never…really…I mean, I can drive, of course. But I haven’t…this ship. I mean, I’m a little rusty.” She entered her password and three panels in front lit up. The engine started. She was pretty sure she heard Irene huff out a laugh at the pink-leopard-faux-fur on the handles of the steering column. She sat down in front of it and set a determined gaze upon her brow. “But I will get you out of here safely.”  
           “Thank you,” said Irene, because she was (apparently) a good and proper person who thanked people for things.  
           “Where are we going?” Molly finally thought to ask.  
           “Hum,” said Irene, and, “Three-three-oh-seven section R.”  
           “Okay,” Molly said, and pulled up a map and punched in the route as the engines whirred, ready. “Right. Wait…”  
           Irene’s eyebrow rose.  
           “That’s where, er, that’s where John Watson moved to. After he left.” After Sherlock died. After Sherlock faked his death. John left London. John left the entire system. Molly couldn’t bear to ask why, why he was leaving and why so far away, seeing the hurt in his eyes while he tucked his gun into his trousers and put on a jacket and rounded the corner and boarded the shuttle alone after giving her a folded-up paper with his address—just in case she or Greg Lestrade or anyone else on London needed him. It was his address, and not the number of his new mobile. No one had talked to him since then. Molly kept her eyes forward and pulled the ship into the hall that opened before her. The ceiling lifted and hoisted her craft up to ground level, behind the cover of a street of more-or-less abandoned flats.  
           “Why?” Molly finally asked.  
           “Long story,” said Irene.  
           “Oh,” said Molly, and then, feeling bold, “well, it’s a pretty long trip.”  
           “Mm,” Irene agreed. She fiddled with something in her pocket, and Molly remembered.  
           “You also have the…you know, the switch to the dome.”  
           “True,” Irene leaned back against the wall. “We have all the time in the world.”  
           The way she said it, of course, was definitely not what Molly was thinking of, at least not until she said it. Not that she _said_ anything, just those words in that _way_ , in some way presupposing tumbling and sheets and touches and whispers. Molly didn’t mean that. She just meant they had time. For talking. “I…”  
           But then again, here Irene was, smiling with her teeth that unwound from beneath her lips like a shark’s or a tiger’s, but not really, because her lips themselves were nothing like a shark’s or a tiger’s. Maybe they weren’t plump or curvy or those other nice things; they were sort of thin and knowing and blood, blood red. Irene looked at Molly and looked at Molly and _looked_ at Molly, and when she did, their eyes actually met, and Irene was Irene, just Irene. Just this woman, a woman, the woman, The Woman. She didn’t seduce Molly into bringing her on this ship; she asked. She—well. No. She coerced. A bit. That wasn’t precisely the same thing as asking. Still, she looked, and not past Molly, but at Molly.  
           “Is something…wrong?” Molly finally asked. She meant to look back at Irene, but then she remembered she had to take off, which was really not all that difficult, with modern ships. A few buttons and a little twist of the steering column. Molly winced at the way the ship wobbled as it went airborne, at the way Irene had to throw one arm out to steady herself. The engines whirred more audibly and faint flames licked out the backs of them. “Sorry,” Molly said, as they passed through the atmosphere and the ship shook more, and Molly’s bag rolled across the floor and thudded against the wall, and Irene almost toppled over. “I should’ve told you to…er…sit or…take off your shoes…”  
           Irene took off her shoes.  
           They tumbled across the floor too, and thunked against the wall with Molly’s bag.  
           “Are you sure this can get us there?” Irene asked, when it was finally quiet enough to speak. Molly felt a little shaky and she breathed to herself for a few moments before turning to Irene.  
           “Yeah,” she said. “It was made for long-distance travel.”  
           “It’s too small to be equipped for long journeys,” she noted.  
           “Well,” Molly said. “Yeah, but,” she nodded toward the doorway into the cabin. “Stabilization pods.” ?  
           “Good golly miss Molly,” Irene whistled low. “You _are_ prepared.”  
           “But you have to tell me first,” Molly said. “Before we get in.” Because then when they got out, they’d be nearly there, and there’d be no time left—well, there would—the—Irene’s—the dome switch, to slow down time, she had that, but—probably best not to use it. The cucumbers could probably find them, then. It probably had some sort of tracking software. “About why we’re going to John’s.”  
           “The short version,” Irene said, pulling up the other chair, now that the ride was smooth enough for her to walk over to it, “is that I’m delivering something to Sherlock.”  
           “At John’s? But he’s…”  
           “He’ll get there eventually,” Irene said.  
           “What is it?” Molly glanced over Irene. She couldn’t be carrying much of anything with her. Was it information?  
           Irene reached into her pocket and pulled out a small bottle.  
           “Paracetamol?”  
           “It would certainly appear that way.” She opened the lid and pulled out one of the pills, turning it over in her hand. It looked exactly like paracetamol.  
           “But it’s not.”  
           Irene smirked. “No. But it’s lovely stuff; I’ve tried it on loads of friends. Want some? They won’t notice one more missing.”  
           Molly started asking, “They?” at the same time as she started asking, “What is it?” at the same time as she started asking, “One _more_?” all whilst trying to say, “No, thanks.” It came out something like, “Whoathay?” and was amended to, “What?”  
           “I think you’d know it as ‘liquid love’ or ‘cuddles in a bottle.’ ‘Hugs.’ There’s a whole yard-long strand of the stuff candied and hidden in these pills.”  
           “Oh,” Molly said, and turned pink. “I see.” She’d heard of it. It wasn’t exactly any sort of notoriously awful drug, however illegal it was, but mostly…well. Mostly couples used it. “It’s for Sherlock?”  
           Irene shrugged. “Bit of a welcome home present.” Molly blushed more deeply, trying to imagine the hundred odd implications. Maybe it involved Irene. Probably it involved John. Irene made Sherlock go funny for a while. John didn’t make Sherlock go funny, but John made Sherlock go soft and calm and still and that was pretty funny, wasn’t it, for Sherlock? “But,” Irene turned the pill over in her fingers, “as I said, if one or two more go missing, he won’t care.” She smiled over the pill at Molly, rolling it between her thumb and forefinger just before her lips.  
           “You…but…why?”  
           “Why what?”  
           “Why me?”  
           “Why not?”  
           Molly flushed a furious red. “That’s an awful reason!” she huffed. Because—because, well, it was. Because Irene was supposed to say…well. She could say whatever she wanted, of course. But—if it was that, well, that—that wasn’t at all what Molly had—wanted? Had she wanted a better reason from Irene? What?  
           “Mm,” Irene said. “You’re right. It is. For you, anyway. Perfect reason for me.”  
           Molly toggled through the map of the route they’d be taking to John’s to avoid making eye contact. Just a shave shy of one millennium, it appeared, and that was the most efficient route. Not that it was going to take an actual millennium—god, no. That’s what wormholes were for. But for some reason they were still stuck on the bloody imperial system for that one measurement, from back when they didn’t have that option. Who measured things in light-years anymore? Distances got pinched down by shortcuts and fancier things that Molly didn’t have, things that crunched space-time up for a second, like all the universe was a giant tablecloth. Distances changed all the time. They were meaningless. With enough money and with enough power, they were easily surmountable. The gauge for light-years didn’t _really_ read light-years—it read the power required to travel a light-year. That changed by route. Some routes had more folded tablecloths than others, more wormholes, more shortcuts.  
           “I don’t see how you do it,” Molly finally said.  
           “What?”  
           “Your…job.” Because that was why, wasn’t it? Why her answer to sex was, “Why not?” She was used to it. Irene’s job was an unusual one, but Molly was pretty sure it was still called that, a job, like how Sherlock had the Work. Irene drifted around and did favors, for money, so they weren’t really favors, exactly, and most of those favors involved tying people up or making them hurt or both, because those people really wanted that. Her website was nicer about it, of course, but Molly wasn’t stupid. She could read the implications.  
           “It’s an ancient art,” said Irene. She freed something from a small hole in the lining of Sherlock’s coat: a riding crop, Molly realized with a little extra thumping in her chest. People used to use those when riding animals—not-people animals. Like horses. Maybe some people still used them, in some places; but not here. “This was made in the twenty-first century,” she ran her fingers along it.  
           “Wow,” Molly said, and abstained from correcting Irene, because two hundred years was far from ancient. Sherlock owned a four-hundred-year-old violin and it wasn’t ancient, either. “Do you use it?” she blurted before thinking.  
           “Sometimes,” Irene said, “on special occasions.” Her eyes were wistful rather than warm.  
           “Like what? Very famous people?” Molly guessed.  
           “No,” Irene said. “Special people.”  
           “Oh,” Molly answered, as Irene ran her fingers over the crop once more before sliding it back into the coat. She capped the paracetamol—the—not-paracetamol—and slipped it back into the coat, too. Sherlock had a riding crop, too, but it wasn’t two hundred years old and he mostly only used it on corpses. Molly pursed her lips slightly as Irene removed her hands from her pockets, now empty. “You weren’t only being chased because you corrected the detectives,” Molly said. “If that’s all you’d done, you wouldn’t have taken the dome switch, either.” She bit her lip. “I don’t think, anyway.”  
           “You’re right,” Irene said. “Not worth the risk.”  
           “But…”  
           Irene glanced down at her pocket. “I may or may not have hoped to… _calm_ …one of the more riled-up cukes.” Molly’s eyes widened fractionally, and then exponentially at Irene’s serenely affirming smile. The not-paracetamol danced in her pocket. “She was going on and on about the other ‘evidence’ proving Sherlock guilty,” Irene shrugged, “couldn’t listen to reason for two seconds while I explained. I may have offered her some pain reliever.”  
           “And she took it?”  
           “Well,” Irene said, “I say _offered_ …” One corner of her mouth tilted upward in a grimace. “She may have noticed it wasn’t your average paracetamol and spit it out and found out it _definitely_ wasn’t your average paracetamol.”  
           “Oh,” Molly said. “Er. Wow. That wasn’t very…er…you seem…”  
           “Smarter than that?” Irene sighed. “I was perhaps feeling a bit fiery to start with. After all, do you suppose Sherlock _wanted_ me there beside Moriarty’s dead body, trying to prove Sherlock’s innocence?”  
           Molly shook her head. She had been specifically instructed to avoid the crime scene, not that she’d really been all that tempted. “Why were you doing it, then?” She frowned, “Now everyone knows you’re alive, again, too.”  
           “Yes,” Irene sighed. “A dramatic entrance seemed like a good idea at the time. Don’t worry,” she smiled, “no one will put two and two together and realize that Sherlock stole my brilliant idea.”  
           Molly smiled back. “You just came back like that for a dramatic entrance?” She wondered how dramatic Sherlock’s coming back to life would be. It was, she figured, about equally likely, though, that he’d come back and act as if nothing had changed. That was a Sherlock sort of thing. Not quite as flashy as Irene. Well, of course not. Molly looked at Irene’s fingernails.  
           “I was a bit riled up,” she confessed, and it seemed more a burden to her than it ought to be. Everyone got riled up. That was okay, sometimes. Irene glanced off to the side, at the stabilization pods. “Never trust someone else to do your own job, I suppose.”  
           Molly squinted a little, trying to envision how that would work with Irene’s job, if she still had that job after dying. You couldn’t really send a substitute dominatrix, could you? “Do you have an…apprentice, or something?”  
           “No,” Irene huffed out a halfhearted laugh. “God, no. I’m not referring to my professional life.” She sat back down, turned her chair to Molly, biting her lip. Molly bit her lip back. Not consciously, just…well. It was a good thing to do at that moment. Molly’s eyes went over Irene’s shoulder and out the window to the stars. Like flying high over land, where houses were little points below them, now stars were little points all around and around. They looked inconsequential. But like flying over land, close up there were roofs and people and silverware. Close to the stars, there were planets and moons and cities and superways. There were roofs and people and silverware. (Sometimes. Sometimes not people. Sometimes no living things at all. Sometimes because there never were living things; sometimes because they were destroyed. Jim, James, Moriarty, Jim, he, Molly found out, destroyed them from the inside, sometimes, for fun, when he hadn’t been too busy taking Sherlock apart bit by little bit. Planting people, planting lies, Sherlock said, was what he did, and he watched societies disintegrate at their own pace. He was patient; he had a hundred civil wars on his plate at any given time to occupy him, and a thousand crimes besides. He had a web, which Sherlock was out destroying.)  
           Irene seemed to notice the path of Molly’s gaze, and turned back toward the window for a moment. “You haven’t done a lot of interstellar travel.”  
           “Of course not,” Molly said meekly. “You know where I’m from. I’ve always lived there.” The slums. Well, compared to everyplace else on London, it seemed. Bart’s, like about any city, had outskirts and areas where no one wanted to live. Working at a hospital was ordinarily an odd occupation for someone living in the slums, of course, Molly thought, except that Bart’s had more hospitals than just about any city, and probably more dead bodies, too. Why else would Sherlock have lived there? It was how she had met him. Not at work—but around a dead body, all the same. That she worked at a hospital, with equipment and body parts to study, was an unexpected bonus for Sherlock, though probably he had deduced that such an opportunity was likely in a city famous for hospitals and criminals.  
           “That’s right.” She turned back to Molly. “You could only recently afford anything like this, isn’t that it?”  
           “Not that recently,” Molly said, and then, “Er. I mean.” Because maybe Irene hadn’t known that she’d been stealing since before Sherlock’s death, that maybe this wasn’t just bought for that purpose, but now she did.  
           “It’s all right,” Irene cooed. “I’m in no position to judge.” Paracetamol-not-paracetamol in her pocket, fleeing the law. Maybe. Riding crop in her coat. (It was her coat, now, wasn’t it? If Sherlock had given it to her.) Fingernails like dried blood. “May I ask why?” And she asked it so gently; not torture, not tying-up or wax burns.  
           Molly looked at a few possible alternate routes. Two-point-six millennia. Five-point-nine, but it swung by Sector 23P, an artists’ district. Just last year, its latest, grandest work had been unveiled—not that it had ever been veiled. Forty well-funded artists had coordinated a supernova, molded its ejected matter into the Black Widow Nebula. There was controversy about a planet in the way. The news said it was evacuated. Molly thought of Jim. The news also said Sherlock was a fake. Molly didn’t really want to see the nebula.  
           Irene cleared her throat.  
           “Um,” Molly said, remembering, going red. “Why I…take peoples’ things?”  
           “Yes.”  
           She shrugged. “It doesn’t…” It was a difficult question. Of course she stole; who didn’t? Maybe she stole more. Maybe she liked it more. Tough saying. “I mean, I’m not supposed to take toes from bodies, you know? But Sherlock wanted them. Not,” she said, “that it’s Sherlock’s fault. Just…” It was easy. She was little and mousy and sweet. It was easy. Nobody came to harm. “I got a bit used to it, after that.” She’d done it before when she needed to. “It wasn’t anything…you know. I didn’t take anyone’s livelihood. I didn’t take anything from my neighbors. Just…you know. Tourists. Money to spare. They hardly ever noticed. I think.” She did it regularly and she was never caught. She tried to time it, so that more than two weeks passed between instances. But she was awful at random. It came to seventeen days every time. It was a surprise no one had noticed. Then again: thefts happened all the time. It was just…half the time, the victims saw her face. She was sweet and small and mousy and innocent. She didn’t have to disable them; she only had to distract them, and they never suspected her. They hardly ever noticed. Apparently.  
           “Indeed,” Irene agreed absently, looking at Molly with curious eyes.  
           “They weren’t doing anything with it,” she said shyly. “I…you know. I helped Sherlock. And.” She breathed heavily out her nostrils. “I’m…I’m not stupid, okay? I’m really…really a bit clever. Sometimes. If I left, eventually, I could go someplace and be more useful.”  
           “I see,” Irene said warmly. “And so you are.” She took the coat off and draped it over the back of the chair before sitting back down.  
           “I guess Sherlock told you,” Molly mumbled. “And that’s how you know. About me stealing.”  
           “Yes,” Irene said. “He told me.” She raised one hand to the side of her head, swept dried-blood nails through her hair, snatching out the tie that kept it up, extracting pins. “But,” she said, lying the pins carefully on the ridge beneath one of the consoles, “that’s not how I know.”  
           “Oh,” Molly said quietly. “How, then?” Was it so obvious? Well, there were the fancy locks. No one where she was from had fancy locks. Maybe her shoes were too nice.  
           Irene shifted. She looked…uncomfortable. It didn’t suit her very well. Molly wondered how often she experienced such a feeling. Molly was uncomfortable all the time (not _all_ the time, but lots of times); she felt she wore it well, or at least with as much skill as one could.  
           “Are you okay?” Molly asked. Whispered? Probably. Whispered.  
           Irene dug through the coat. She fished out the riding crop, ran her fingers over it. She cleared her throat. “I said before I was riled up.”  
           “You said don’t trust anyone else to do your job,” Molly added, quietly. “What job? You never said.”  
           Irene leaned forward, toward Molly, and then seemed to think better of it, and sat back, the crop delicately poised between her fingers, like a queen with her scepter. But when she breathed out, her shoulders slunk forward. She cleared her throat again. “I know you’ve been stealing because I’ve seen you do it.”  
           “Oh,” said Molly. How odd. How strange. Where was she? Disguised, looking through a shop window? Sitting on the park bench? “When?”  
           “Every time,” she said, “for the past year. I’ve seen you steal twenty-one times.” She breathed out. “And you never get caught.”  
           “Wow,” Molly said, and, “I know,” and, “it’s the only time I’ve ever been so lucky.”  
           “It’s not luck,” said Irene. Her fingers danced along the crop’s handle. She touched the popper before lying the crop back across her lap. “I…” Her lips twisted with struggling. Molly couldn’t speak, wouldn’t speak. Molly waited. Irene said, “I…I remember you. When you signed the paperwork saying I was dead. That wasn’t me, of course,” she clarified. “But I waited outside to make sure Sherlock left convinced, and saw you leave afterward. Working on Christmas,” she tutted. “I...” she shrugged. She restarted. “Sex is a convenient trade to ply. People at their most vulnerable—easy to get all kinds of juicy information. People need to trust the people they play with,” she said, “even if it’s masked by faux distrust, even if they want to be helpless.” She sighed. “I could have done a thousand things, but I chose this.”  
           “Do you like it?” Molly asked, and then, “Er, well, of course you do, I mean, since…”  
           “Oh,” Irene said, “it’s enjoyable enough. But I don’t get off on it, if that’s what you think.”  
           “Oh.”  
           “Don’t tell anyone I told you,” one corner of her mouth lifted. “I’m very good at faking.”  
           “Oh,” Molly felt her ears get hot, “yes, um, of course.”  
           “But, as I said, it’s excellent for information extraction. Excellent for being underestimated, too.”  
           “Okay,” Molly said, “yes. Okay. What about…”  
           Irene breathed in. “Kate…didn’t take my being dead well. She left.” She swallowed. “I couldn’t tell her. It would risk…”  
           “But you’re back now,” Molly said.  
           “Too late,” Irene said. She held up a hand, and Molly closed her mouth. “As I was saying, I…I watched you steal. You were quite…cute…at it.”  
           “Um,” Molly looked down, “thanks?”  
           “But I noticed the first bloke got a good look at your face. I…didn’t like it.”  
           “Oh. Um.”  
           “I didn’t like it the next time it happened, either, or the next.”  
            “So…”  
           “Of course I didn’t…do anything myself. Directly. I have some people who owe me.”  
           “Owe you?” Molly asked, because that was the safest question to ask out of any of them.

           “They were Jim’s,” she said, and Molly knew which Jim she meant. “And they owe me because they _were_ Jim’s. I…won them. From him. Velvet. In a proper old-fashioned card game, and everything.”  
           “Like…”  
           “Not slaves,” Irene said. “But…loyal…followers. Anyway,” she leaned forward again, her nostrils flaring as she breathed out. “They took care of it.”  
           “Took…”  
           Irene cleared her throat. “I don’t think you’ll like _knowing_ more than _not knowing_.”  
           Molly swallowed a lump down her throat. “You mean…”  
           “You never saw any of them again, did you?”  
           “They were tourists,” Molly squeaked out. She leaned forward, edging her chair closer to Irene. “What did you—they—what did they do?”  
           Irene stared at her bare feet. “Molly,” she said. Molly shivered. “They destroyed them. Thoroughly and leaving no evidence.”  
           Molly buried her face in her hands.  
           “Like ribbons.” Irene took in a slow breath. Through eyes screwed shut Molly hoped she wasn’t imagining its shakiness. “I’m sorry. It seemed…I didn’t want you to get caught.”  
           “I don’t,” Molly said, and felt breath scrape down her tight throat as she tried to suck it in. “I don’t. I…”  
           “Except the last one,” Irene said. “Your last bunny. My man…botched it. He got away.”  
           Molly stood quickly, and almost stumbled over as the blood was left behind at lower altitudes. Her heavy chair wobbled with the force with which she left it. “I need. I’m. Please go. Directions and…focus.” She nodded to the map, to the keyboard, to the console. She looked out the window. “There’s…sit…someplace. Or the stabilization pod. There’s…that.”  
           “Would you like me to?” Irene asked quietly. “If you—if you want to not talk to me for the rest of the trip, that’s okay. I can go to sleep and you can just drop me off at John Watson’s and…go…wherever it is you wanted to go.”  
           “You don’t have to sleep,” Molly said quietly. “I. I just—need—just—give me a—a bit.” Her legs were quivering. Of course they were. There were twenty people dead because she’d stolen from them. Because Irene—because Irene didn’t want her caught. Why? Molly couldn’t think of it just now. She leaned over the keyboard, traced her fingers around the edges of each key systematically. She wished she had a lab or something in here. Some nice intestines to analyze. Some feet and some ridiculous demands from Sherlock, ‘go remove all the toenails and save aside the tendons,’ or something that made no medical or scientific sense except that Sherlock needed those two things for experiments, to take home so that next time Sherlock swept in with John at his heels, Molly could hear John making a fuss about Sherlock already had enough toenails, so why did he need to collect John’s toenail clippings, too? If Molly had a lab with a few nice dead bodies, she could calm down. That was awful, wasn’t it? Her nose wriggled as she held back a sniffle. Her eyes squinted as she held back tears.  
           Irene didn’t say anything, just walked back into the main cabin and presumably took a seat someplace among the canisters and crates of supplies, what little the ship could hold.  
           Molly looked out the window. She had spent far too long, probably, when she was little, looking at the stars. There was something about being able to see them and knowing that it was possible, that to someone, they were accessible, that drove her to loneliness. She could go there, if she could, but she couldn’t. But it was possible: people did it. Some people whisked around from system to system day and night, without days and nights. Celebrities, scientists going to conferences. Sherlock didn’t leave London much, but he’d been to those stars, too—some of them. John had been even farther, farther and on the edges, probably, with the Peacekeepers. John could shoot people. He couldn’t always keep peace. Nobody could all the time. But he could also heal people. Maybe that was why Sherlock looked at John like stars; maybe because he had been so far, maybe because in the same day he blew things away and stitched things back up, maybe because Sherlock needed both of those things, being blown away and being stitched up. Molly could only stitch up, could only slice apart and stitch back up: and dead things, not things spurting blood and screaming obscenities and seeing stars.  
           Someone, somewhere, was probably circling at least most of those stars. If Molly was lucky, at most she could look at a map of London and imagine that she had the sort of time, the sort of freedom to travel to any of its continents. It was a tiny fraction of a light-year, a little blip. The Tube could rocket her through just tangent to the core, just beneath it, just over it, quick and easy. But she had nothing on that other side, really. Just tourists.  
           Just dead tourists.  
           On one of the screens Molly pulled up images of the Black Widow Nebula.  
           Twelve of the people who’d funded the artists were now dead. That would be Sherlock, because the artists were funded by Moriarty, because they blew the star supernova and the news said everyone had been evacuated but the news lied. Sherlock killed the people who Jim hired to kill. John killed people who tried to kill Sherlock. Irene hired people to kill the people Molly mugged. Molly managed bodies of people who’d been killed in the slums of St. Bart’s, which happened all the time.  
           The stars shone starkly, and Molly was among them.  
           Whatever that meant.  
           “We have enough things to stay awake for about a week,” Molly raised her voice so that Irene could hear it. It cracked, a little. “If you want. If—I want to talk to you.”  
           Irene didn’t say anything.  
           Molly closed the pictures of the Nebula. Sherlock would say _dull,_ but he wouldn’t mean it, because Sherlock would be enamored with the idea of people made widows by the Black Widow, funded by Moriarty, when the news said everyone was fine. He didn’t get his fingers in that one, though, getting ready to not-really-die. Maybe he would, later, when he was done being a fake, when he was done being the man who died jumping from a library in St. Bartholomew’s on London, when he was done becoming famous for recovering the nineteenth-century works of a chemist from Germany on Earth. (“The thief’s home was easy to identify,” he’d told the interviewers. “Stains of pittacal.”  Sherlock’s scarf was dyed with pittacal.) Maybe after he came back to John, because, Molly thought, thinking of the little dip that Irene couldn’t keep out of her voice when she said _Kate_ , being dead was harder on the living.  
           Molly sat back in her chair. She should have burned her house down. She wouldn’t be tempted to go back. She could stay out in the stars, now that she’d been dragged out here anyway.  
           “You came to me,” Molly finally said, speaking into the other room, “because I have a ship. And because you knew I couldn’t say no. But also…” she swallowed. “Because you knew if I didn’t run, they’d not only find out I was a thief, but think I was a murderer, too. Because of your…”  
           Irene was still quiet. Molly could hear her shuffling. Her feet were probably cold; her shoes still lay abandoned next to Molly’s emergency bag.  
           “I’m sorry,” Irene said. “It’s my fault.”  
           Irene definitely wasn’t like Sherlock.  
           Molly got up and peered around the doorframe at Irene, who had gone back to running fingers over her crop.  
           “How many different systems have you been to?” Molly asked, because it was an easy question.  
           “Oh,” Irene said, glancing up, surprised, “I’d suppose…fifty? Sixty?”  
           “Wow,” Molly said. She tried, “ _Damn,_ ” which tasted a little funny, which was why she generally avoided it. Irene raised an eyebrow. Molly blushed. “Is it better by yourself? I mean should I—I. Travel, I mean. Would I like it better by myself?”  
           Irene shrugged. “Do you normally prefer company?”  
           “I don’t know,” Molly said. She was always alone, mostly. No one followed her and she strode quick at no one’s heels. She was stationary and static in the morgue, except when she’d gone stealing. She’d been alone, except, apparently, when she’d gone stealing. “I’m always alone.”  
           “You aren’t now,” Irene said, and she licked the inside of her mouth like she was saying things that tasted funny to her, too.  
           “I,” Molly started, and she found she had no idea what she wanted to say. Actually, she had lots of ideas of what she wanted to say, none of them seemed like particularly _good_ ideas. Then, Molly found that she had no choice about what to say, because something outside went _tick-tick-tick_ and then _thud-thud-thud_ and then _clunk-ka-clunk-ka-clunk_ and so Molly said, “ _Damn_.”  
           Irene shot to her feet. “What is that?”  
           “I was hoping you’d know.” But Irene had flown in hundreds of craft and all of them were big and this one was tiny and piloted by an amateur, wasn’t it? Molly ran to the console and looked for flashing buttons, flipped through the operator’s manual. “It’s something outside,” she said, and then, “sorry, obvious,” and then, “I have to go.” She was up and she was swinging open a case against the wall and setting a headset over the bridge of her nose and turning it on, letting it wrap around her face like a squid who had so generously provided an air mask and goggles. She slipped on a suit that wrapped around her, too: green, but not cucumber green, and almost-reflective. The little gauge on her forearm read _100%_ and _17m00s,_ which was not a lot of minutes, but that was how long the ship estimated it had left before whatever had gone wrong stacked and stacked and then, _then_ , in something this size, they were dead. The same display showed the side of the ship with a faint blinking. _Board 91A,_ it said, with a little line toward where board 91A could be located.  
           “What can I do?” Irene breathed, leaning forward. Molly backed up a little, as if worried she might try to strip the suit from her and put it on herself.  
           “Um,” Molly said, and, “you’re smart, so,” and, “so, I don’t know, but maybe you do.” She tapped the headset-now-helmet and then a palm’s width of buttons on the console. “Talk to me with this. Tell me if you figure it out.” She pressed a few other buttons and the ship’s speed slowed, or so they assumed, with no nearby reference points from which to discern the difference between zero and a thousand kilometers per second. It was slower, at least, than it had been. It was stopped; she had to be sure. She had to believe it. Frightening things required faith. Molly strode to the back of the ship, to the airlock.  
           She took deep breaths.  
           “Stand back.”  
           Irene leaned forward, and pressed a kiss to Molly’s helmet, and then she did.  
           Molly, before she could lean back in, for whatever good that would accomplish, entered the airlock and then left the other side.  
           Outside, in space, ought to be cold, ought to be lonely, ought to be frightening.  
           Molly was only determined. She swam through the strange and new to the side of the ship and started investigating. She couldn’t listen for _clunk-ka-clunk_. She could only hear her radio. She could hear Irene breathing.  
           It had been coming from the left side, from near the back. Molly scoured the side, ran her gloved fingers along the ship’s metallic ridges, aerodynamic for smooth landings, which would never happen for as long as Molly was flying, anyway, probably.  
           “I can’t find it,” she breathed. Her arm said _13m23s._ “Where is it?”  
           “Back,” Irene said, “left if you’re facing the front. That’s where it was.”  
           “I know,” said Molly, because she had her little screen, _91A_ , “but _where_?” She was about bits and bruises of bodies. She wasn’t a mechanic or a pilot or an engineer. She heard nothing. All was still, now, ship unmoving, no little bursts and blurbs and rivulets of rubbish and radiation sliding against the ship, smacking into it, battering its nonexistent sails. “I need to get into it,” she said. _Board 91A_ was on the side of the ship; it was _inside_ the ship. She should be right here, right in front of it.  
           “Back in?”  
           “Into the side. The guts.” Molly knew guts. Molly got guts. She didn’t get wires or chips, but at least they were _guts_ , and that was a step closer.  
           “Stop talking,” Irene said, “don’t use up all your charge on purifying air.”  
           Molly breathed slowly. She dug along the leg of her suit for the little kit that theoretically contained everything she’d need. She’d read about it when she bought the ship. She read the whole manual. She turned on the 10-10 laser and sliced in a thin and nearly seamless line. A corner. Another corner. She lifted the panel away with her glove with grippy-fingers, with sticky fingers. She stuck it to her leg. Her arm said _06m52s._  
           “ _There_ ,” she breathed, as a plate of chips drifted almost free, clinging to just one wire, the other one brittle and snapped from its other half. Her kit had extra wires. Well, one of the kits. She dug through the first. Nothing, nothing, nothing. Another: chips. Chips and chips. Extra plates. Another: lasers, a pair of tweezers, an extra copy of the manual that she could project onto the side of the ship for step-by-step instructions.  
           This was a little like bodies. Like little veins.  
           She put each kit back carefully, settling her fingers gently into each compartment she dug through lest she fling any of the supplies from its small magnetic field, let them drift off and become space rubbish to smack up ineffectually against other, bigger ships.  
           Her arm said _01m04s_.  
           “I can’t find it,” she said, “it’s a wire, it’s easy, I can’t find it.” It had to be in the last kit.  
           And it was.  
           Her arm said _00m45s._  
           “I don’t have time to attach it,” she said. It was delicate. It would take something like three minutes, at least.  
           “Come back in,” said Irene, and Molly could hear her throat bobbing.  
           “Find a new route,” Molly said. “Maybe we can jump through a shortcut nearby, crash into someplace, before our time runs out.” It was the only way.  
          Irene said nothing.  
          Molly slid back along the side, back along the hatch toward. And this was stupid, stupid, _stupid_. The worst way to go. The worst. Because her arm said _00m43s_ and then _00m25s_ and then _00m12s_ and she was only just reaching the hatch, and Irene had said nothing, and she wasn’t, wasn’t, _wasn’t_ ready to die among the stars, but her arm said _00m06s_ and this was stupid, stupid, awful, stupid, because she wouldn’t even be in on time if Irene had found something. Sherlock would roll his eyes. She should have planned ahead. She should have timed herself on her way out. But she was more determined, then, and now she was panicked, and panicked meant clumsy and slow. Her arm said—her arm still said _00m06s._  
           The hatch slid open.  
           Irene drifted out, clad in another suit.  
           Molly’s arm said _00m06s._ So did Irene’s. Molly almost laughed.  
           “Go,” Irene mouthed, and she followed Molly to 91A, and held the kit gingerly while Molly dug through it and found the wires and with her nimble little fingers wound them through the board, snuck them up against chips and resistors just like the projection of the manual said. The next time the numbers on her arm changed, they said, _OK._  
           She looked at Irene.  
           Irene was unreadable.  
           They crawled back into the hatch.  
           “How?” Molly breathed, the moment her helmet retracted.  
           “Dome,” said Irene. She glanced toward the wall, where she’d stuck it, its projected thin green veil stretching outside the ship, covering most of the side, all the way to the hatch.  
           “So we’re not in it now,” Molly said, her heart making up for lost time as it sped up and pounded and thudded at knowing she’d just been inside it, inside stolen slowed time.  
           Irene strode over to the wall and unstuck the little suction-button-switch. Its beams swept over them. She reached up and adhered it to the ceiling.  
           Molly stilled.  
           “Have you got,” Irene started, “any idea…”  
           Molly felt hot. She felt her guts all rising up her throat, “No,” she said, she _barked_ , louder than she meant. “Have _you_ got any idea?” It felt good, it felt unsteady and off-kilter and it made her dizzy. “You,” she forged ahead, “you, you, _you,_ you _killed_ people, you made it _my_ fault that they died, have _you_ got _any_ idea—” she shouted, and stepped forward, and stopped, and she was hot, and tasted bile. “I am _done_ with dying, don’t you say a _thing_ about me almost dying, or us almost dying, don’t you say a _thing_ about ‘how dare I do that to you,’ don’t you say a _thing_!”  
           Irene opened her mouth.  
           “Do you _know_ the last time my life wasn’t about _dying_?” Molly ran her hands through her hair, red, steam out her ears. Irene swallowed. Molly paced, paced madly, snapped her legs forward as she walked, boiled in her suit. “ _I don’t!_ ”  
           Irene stepped out of her suit. She reached for her coat. She fished the crop from inside the lining and held it gently out to Molly.  
           Molly swallowed. She ran her fingers along the handle. She slipped out of her suit and grabbed tighter hold of it, for fear Irene might drop it before her.  
           “I hope you know why I did it,” Irene said.  
           Molly bit her lip.  
           “I was going to stop, after the first one, but the more I watched you, the more I…couldn’t.”  
           “That’s not very good,” Molly whispered.  
           “I know you wanted to go someplace far away and explore the universe,” Irene said. Molly reeled at the topic shift, found half her brain trying to stick to preventive murder while the other half flew to the stars. “But if you—if you don’t. If you want to live someplace…” She licked her lips, looked at the crop in Molly’s hands. “I have another home in a system called Bohemia. You should live in Bohemia. You would like it. Dire shortage of forensic scientists. If you—if that’s not too—death. For you.”  
           Molly looked down at the crop. “Why did you hand me this?”  
           “I work best in my natural state,” Irene smiled. “You’re holding it for me for a moment.”  
           “Work…?”  
           “Yes.” Irene’s fingers flitted around the hem of her dress shirt. They slipped up the buttons. Molly couldn’t look away. “I want to help you.” Her shirt slipped from around her shoulders. “You obviously feel terribly guilty for what happened to those people.” Irene’s teeth were like a tiger’s or a shark’s. “I think you need to feel properly punished.” Irene set her shirt aside and reached around to unhook her bra. It slipped from her shoulders, too. She shrugged it off. “Come on, now. Strip.”  
           “Um,” Molly said, “just, I—is that—I mean, that won’t really—”  
            “No,” Irene said, “it won’t. It won’t bring them back or undo what happened. But,” her eyes narrowed, just before she turned her back to Molly. She slid out of her slacks; she slid out of her strikingly practical pants. She stood nude with her back to Molly. “Even though there’s nothing to be done about it, you still feel bad. You need,” Irene turned back around, holding her hand out and lowering her voice to a seductive hiss, “to be punished.”  
            Molly’s lips wobbled just enough to let out a whimper. She released the crop into Irene’s hand, and Irene took it and snapped the popper lightly in one hand, waiting.  
            “Strip.”  
            “I,” Molly said, and, “um,” and, she curved her lips into her teeth and bit them. “Really?” she said, because it was probably the best to make absolutely sure, before anything else. That could save time.  
            “Miss Hooper,” Irene’s voice hardened, “get your clothes on the floor. This _will_ hurt more if I have to do it for you.”  
            Molly was pretty sure this was the part where she was allowed to say no, or, or, stop, or something, if she wanted. Or she needed a safeword, right, yes, that, that would to too. She could feel her knees quivering. “Cucumber,” she said, as she tentatively pulled her shirt up. “Um, uh, I’ll, I’ll say that if,” she said. “So if I need you to…”  
            “You’re being punished,” Irene said. “You don’t get a safeword.” Molly couldn’t tell if she meant it, or if she was trying to, to, to be mean, like she did when she did her job, which is what she was doing now, sort of. Molly shivered her way out of her shirt, and yanked off her bra at the same time in a fit of fear she wouldn’t have the nerve to remove it later, would irritate Irene with her slowness. On that momentum, she yanked down her trousers and pants and pulled off her socks and then stopped, stock still, stark naked, in front of Irene, arms wrapped around her chest.  
            Only then did it occur to her to wonder whether this was what she wanted.  
            “Shh,” Irene said, “stop thinking so hard.”  
            Molly tried that, but it was very difficult. “I don’t know if I want…”  
            “This isn’t about what you want,” Irene cut in, firmly. “This isn’t to make you feel warm and fuzzy and good about yourself.” She took a few paces closer, close enough to run her fingers down one of Molly’s arms and encourage it to release its hold across her chest. She did the same to the other. Molly tried to will the chill away from her breasts, but it was pointless, and…and, well, they were point _ed_. “You will feel pain,” Irene said, now whispering into Molly’s ear, “and that pain will absolve you,” she tucked several of Molly’s stray hairs back, “if you let go and allow yourself to feel it.”  
            Molly didn’t know if that made any sense at all, she didn’t, but it was probably one of those things that she was thinking about too much, so she tried very hard not to think while Irene took two steps back and instructed Molly to turn around, holding the crop, the two-hundred-year-old crop, steady. Molly’s feet felt itchy while she waited; her back felt itchy. She might lose balance. Her muscles tensed up in anticipation, and she could feel each one twitch, and she could imagine particularly well all the ones she’d seen on bodies before, albeit much less twitching, much less fiery, much less alive.  
            The crop popped against her skin and she shouted out. It was, it was, it was definitely _pain_ but mostly _heat_ , at least before it sunk in and became more pain, and then it _was_ , was was was pain.  
            “Hush,” Irene said. She swung again. “How many do you think you deserve, Miss Hooper?”  
            “Uhm—”  
            “I think twenty.”  
            This time, Molly did whimper, let the mumble of air pass her lips uncensored. _That’s ten percent so far then,_ she thought to herself, recited to herself, as she braced for the next. She thought of the twenty-one people she’d most recently robbed as the next three, four, five snaps reddened her back, and she softly keened to herself all the while, until they all became a bit blurry, until the heat radiating off her sent them melting away like wax, like liquid leaving her chest and seeping down her body, and for the next six strikes she let it ooze away.  
            And then, she forgot.  
            She forgot about the oozing—or, it faded from importance, for now, for this moment, because all Molly could process was the sharp stinging of Irene’s crop, never hitting the same area twice, and a faint stinging at her eyes that she registered as tears, and visions of stars and of little clocks counting down seconds.  
            And then it stopped.  
            “Good girl,” Irene was whispering from right behind her. She laid her fingers against Molly’s back, and it burned. “Don’t you feel better now?”  
            “Um,” said Molly, “uh.” She didn’t feel much of anything, besides shaking and stinging and burning and dizziness.  
            “See?” she brushed her fingers along Molly’s teary face. “That’s much better, isn’t it?” She pressed herself up against Molly, which Molly thought she ought to be more opinionated about, except that she couldn’t do just at this moment; all she processed was warm and pleasant, all the curves and lumps of her, and still the bit of burning. Silently, Molly reached for her pants and her trousers and Irene took a small step back to let her put them on. Once she did, Irene’s blood nails tickled her waistband; the fingers of one hand tucked themselves underneath. The fingers of her other hand danced outside Molly’s trousers, Molly registered dizzily, and were rubbing circles up the inseam, rubbing rhythmic when they reached the front. “Nnh,” said Molly, and tilted her hips forward before thinking, before thinking and gasping and breathing and taking a half-step forward, away. That was nice. That was much nicer than being punished. “Later,” she said, “please,” and, “later.” And she raised her brows imploringly and tried not to feel the faint beginnings of wetness between her legs, not now, not yet, and not, she thought, as a result of the whipping but of those few soft touches afterward, and pleaded that Irene would not take offense. She needed time, time time time, as always, time, even if time was almost-frozen.  
           And she needed—well—they needed—to keep running. And hopefully Irene understood, and hopefully she wouldn’t take it to mean Molly didn’t—wasn’t interested in—wasn’t—  
           She smiled buttery. “Of course,” she said, “you’ve a ship to pilot, Captain.” Like it was all gone, all of it. The reason for Molly’s punishment, just…vanished. Irene leaned the crop against the wall like a promise, and reached for the dome switch, and the green veil appeared to retract back into it.  
           And so Molly shuffled forward to the front, very, very sure Irene could see the way her knees buckled in, just a little, at the weakness and the wetness of her from the waist down. They started again, and this time, nothing rattled.  
           “We should sleep,” Molly finally said. She wasn’t ready for…she needed more time to think about it. She had been alone for a while. She needed to stop hopping into bed with people who commanded waves of serial killers.  
           But she probably wouldn’t.  
           “The rest of the way there?”  
           “I think so. The rest of the way is clear.” The ship could do the rest of the work itself, and wake them when they got near enough that they’d have to worry about interacting with anyone else.  
          So they climbed into the pods, and for the next several weeks, they slept.  
  
  
           “Molly?” John raised his eyebrows when he opened his door. “Is something…” He looked past her, as if for a clue. Molly could discern the moment his mouth went dry. “Irene Adler?” His brows furrowed. “You were dead.”  
           “Mm,” she said, “yes. Funny thing, that.”  
           “I—you—” he huffed, stood with a widened stance that blocked the door. His fists balled and tightened. “If Sherlock had—” and then stopped, as if the word leaving his mouth had broken a spell.  
           “I know,” Irene said. “I’m sorry.” Molly narrowed her eyes at Irene, who didn’t sound all that sorry.  
           “You two...” John looked between them. Maybe he used skills he’d learned from Sherlock to detect something neither of them had bothered taking the time to hide; maybe he was letting his imagination veer in the hopeful direction. “You two?”  
           “Um,” Molly said, and, “can we talk inside?”  
           “Right,” and now John was flustered to, “uh, right,” and he admitted them. “All right,” he said, when the door closed, “there is definitely some kind of gap in understanding here,” he motioned between himself and Molly and Irene, who sat slightly closer than Molly was used to sitting with people. He turned to Irene. “How are you _not_ dead? Mycroft—”  
           “Doesn’t need to know everything his brother gets up to,” Irene said. John’s mouth dropped open slightly at the same time as his eyebrows jutted down, waiting and ready to argue. “Dear John, whatever you told him, about me living, or about me dying, he knew it was a lie. I _was_ about to die. Sherlock saved me.”  
           “He…” John heaved a sigh, and buried his face in his hands. “What a colossal arse of a man. He went on acting like…like,” John mumbled. “ _God_.”  
           “As he i—was wont to do,” Irene smiled, and John shot her a look.  
           John finally took a seat. He looked to Molly. “And what the _hell_ are you doing here? The both of you.”  
           “Running from the law,” Molly blurted, at the same time as Irene said, “An errand.” They both said, “That, too.”  
           “Oh, god,” John groaned. “What did you do? Molly, I thought you were better than that.”  
           “Molly started it, actually,” Irene said. Molly shot her a glare. John lent Molly a sympathetic smirk.  
           “It’s a long story,” Molly said. “But Scotland Yard is a bit peeved at Miss Adler and might maybe think I’m a murderer even though I’m not.”  
           “And I’m here to deliver this,” Irene fished out the bottle and handed it to John.  
           “Paracetamol?” Molly had never seen John gawk, except maybe at something particularly ridiculous that Sherlock had dared to say. When John looked back up at Irene, he appeared to be so thoroughly amused and so thoroughly pained that the two were inseparable upon his features. “Thanks, but I don’t think I’ll be doing that again,” he said, trying to hand the bottle back, and from the look on his face Molly thought probably the pain won. “Not without—Why did you bring this?”  
           Irene opened her mouth.  
           “I promise it won’t go so disastrously as last time,” said a deep voice from a kitchen pantry, followed by the faint _thud_ of a shutting door. John nearly fell over his feet running to the kitchen, and would have done, Molly thought, except that a pair of long arms reached out and caught him.    
           “Thank you, Miss Adler, Miss Hooper,” Sherlock said, the corners of his mouth folding up. “Now if you’ll kindly exit the premises as promptly as humanly possible, I have a few things to discuss with John.”  
  
  
           There were seven different suns and twenty-six different planets to choose from in Bohemia, but Irene had chosen the one with the longest stretch of morning sunlight at the equator.  
           “I have something else to tell you,” Irene murmured through the rays. She flipped from her side onto her back to look at Molly. She winced a little.  
           “Mm?” said Molly. She had fallen asleep wearing her lab coat and nothing else, but it was gone now. Irene had fallen asleep in handcuffs, but she wasn’t wearing them.            
           “While you were asleep,” Irene reached for the beside and rested a jar of ointment on the bed, “I rubbed you down with this. I was hoping you could return the favor.” She glanced at her own back.  
           “You picked your cuffs,” was all Molly could observe.  
           “Of course I did. Practice. Better safe than sorry. The Yard might still be looking for us.” They’d dropped the dome switch off far away, to be safe, but that didn’t make either of them really all that much less wanted.  
           Molly blushed. She took the ointment, and set it aside before reaching beneath the bed. “I practiced a little too. Just in case.” She pulled her hand back up. “I, ehm, I got you this.”  
           Irene stared for several seconds before her features melted to a sly smirk. “Molly, you naughty girl.”


End file.
